Aurora and BenU probably are the class of the league.  Rockford seems to be a bit of iron pyrite.
 Feasting on lesser competition.  Dominican could be a suprise team to me.  They look to have put of come good wins early winning two at Hendrix. 

My team, CUC, could do some damage this year.  Pitching depth looks good and the line up is really experienced. Florida trip revealed some strong starting options.  Got good wins against Massey top 85 teams in Carthage and Grove City and is currently 3 - 0 against the CCIW. 

NACC v. CCIW/SLIAC/WIAC to date:

NACC v. CCIW (17 games) NACC 9 CCIW 8
NACC v. SLIAC (5 games*) NACC 5 SLIAC 0
NACC v. WIAC (3 games*) NACC 0 WIAC 3

*almost too small to report on

Yessir Hopefan.  In FL.  Watching Concordia U- Chicago v Warburg at 3:30 at Lake Myrtle Sports complex.  Head on over. 

Two of the five System principals are really hard against top talent.

Turnovers - need 33+.  Against longer, more athletic and poised guards with top teams, this is problematic for lesser level system teams. 

Offensive Rebound 33% of your misses.  Even with the best "wedging in" strategy trained dailey, and recruiting longer and more athletic "bigs" (GUs Comeaux brothers) to gather long misses, the higher seeded teams will have larger bodies who are athletic.  They will be able to collect a great majority of the longer misses around the rim.

GUs scare of Augie was real.  +17 in first half.  Double digits at half.  Had the lead with less than 10.  Shout out to Johari Dix and the squad. Dix was a menace but got his 5th half way through the 2nd period.

That said, I would posit that the system has been brilliant for GU.  1995-2018 - 0 ncaa tournaments.  Since 2.  GU is thriving. 

Enrollment/retention/fundraising/etc... are all up and in some respects up big.  The place looks great and the vibe is amazing. 

It should be noted that a SLIAC team has never won a tournament game.  So, I may characterize a loss less like like "a system team couldn't win in the NCAAs", and more like like a "#16 seeded system team couldn't win in the ncaas."   

Quote from: bopol on March 02, 2025, 05:07:43 PM

Quote from: Greek Tragedy on March 01, 2025, 08:21:42 AMBoth Grinnell and Greenville are in their conference finals. One or both could make the NCAAs today.

Monmouth, the #1 seed in the MWC was upset by Lake Forest. Spalding, who tied Greenville atop the SLIAC was upset by Webster. Could this be the year for the System teams???

Since Grinell and Greenville both made the tournament, can we just make them play each other for the hilarity? I figure we'd end up with a score of 212-208.

Yes, please.

Quote from: Greek Tragedy on February 24, 2025, 06:53:24 PMGreenville comes in as the #1 seed, primed to host and make the NCAAs. Hoping they can do it because it would be fun to see a System team in the NCAAs. Grinnell is the #2 seed in the MWC tournament. 2 System teams??? Crazy!

They both did it. 

A quick review of the Grinnell box score doesn't really look that system-ish.  I know they've been modifying quite a bit since the coaching change.

Anyway, fun to have them both in. 

GU - 115
Webster - 104

Huge game from Kiarie Patrick. 
31p/9r/5s

Webster shot it great. 
Made 63% from 3.  Made only one less total than GU.

GU only lost boards by 1. 

Gu +19 on turnovers.  Forcing 37 from Webster

GU extended lead to 18 with 7 to play and held off a late surge to win.

Webster out punches Spalding.
GU outruns Eureka.
Championship game tomorrow at Greenville. 
Bunch v Barber

Headed to Florida to watch some NACC baseball.  5 teams will be in and around Auberndale next week:

CUC
Aurora
BenU
Dominican
Marian

It'll be fun to see a nice early cross section of NACC games. 

First Team All-Conference
Anthony Dillard, Spalding University (Sr.)
Kylon McCullough, Lyon College (Sr.)
Karl Moore Jr., Webster University (Sr.)
Charles Nelson, Fontbonne University (So.)
Ja'Rod Webb, Greenville University (Sr.)

Second Team All-Conference
Emaryon Byrd, Eureka College (Jr.)
Dariun Doss, MUW (Gr.)
Kiarie Patrick, Greenville University (Sr.)
Jemard Sykes II, Webster University (Jr.)
Frank Toney, Lyon College (Sr.)

Third Team All-Conference
Caden Bradford, Spalding University (Jr.)
Peewee Brown, Eureka College (Sr.)
Jacoby Johnson, Spalding Univeristy (Sr.)
Walker Gohring, Westminster College (So.)
Vincent Rodriguez, Greenville University (Sr.)

All-Defensive Team
Dariun Doss, MUW (Gr.)
Jacoby Johnson, Spalding University (Sr.)
Malik Madison, Lyon College (Sr.)
Karl Moore Jr., Webster University (Sr.)
Vincent Rodriguez, Greenville University (Sr.)

I would argue that Vince Rodriguez should be at least 2nd team, if not first.  Double digit points, 2nd in league in assists, first in assists to turnovers, Led nation in steals, and had 3.3 rebounds per game.  That said, Ja'Rod as 1st and Kiarie as 2nd is great and makes a lot of sense.  I am not totally sure that i understand Dariun Doss or Jamard Sykes II on the second.  Frankly, I probably just be happy we didn't have a repeat of the Eric Williams, Johari Dix sham.  Or the 1995/6 year when Doug Faulkner clearly should have been coach of the year.

Webster by 5 was correct, but I missed on the Eureka margin. 

Final 4 is set. 

#2 Spalding v #3 Webster on Friday at 5:30p

#1 Greenville v #5Eureka on Friday at 7p

All games in Greenville at HJ Long gymnasium. 

QUARTERFINAL MATCHUPS TONIGHT:

Fontbonne at Webster:

- Split regular season games. 
- Fontbonne hammered Webster last weekend by 19 in the last game on Lee McKinney court.
- Webster will pull this one out tonight. 

WEBSTER by 5.

MUW at Eureka:

- Split regular season games.
- MUW played great against Spalding last weekend. 
- MUW plays slow and has quality size, but really struggles in up tempo games. 
- EU likes to play faster and will be at home.  May help in dictating pace.

Give me Eureka and PeeWee in this one.

Eureka by 3

Thank you for the information.  February snow games have to be a wild if your world is calabrated to 300+ days a year of 82 and sunny. 

I would not sleep on CUC this year.  Lineup is very strong and pitching was bolstered with some very strong additions.  They split in Indy this weekend, losing to Franklin 4-3 and beating North Park (last years CCIW champs) 9-8.  CUC has always hit.  If their pitching stabilises, they will be near the top of this league.   

Watched the North Park game live on Sunday in Indiana.  Soph catcher Reyn Matsuzaki with two bombs in a close loss.  He really presented well behind the plate as well.  One of 10 Hawaiians on the team.  My wife, a former NPU employee, and I were blown away by that.  I am sure that someone knows the connection to Hawaii and we are curious.  Hawaii is a very baseball oriented, but very small state.  My wife posited that maybe the Coach Johnson gets a recruiting trip for he and his wife and the program covers it.